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Capacity building workshop: State of the Marine Environment reporting

GRID-Arendal, UNEP and the Abidjan Convention are organising a workshop together on State of the Marine Environment (SOME) reporting. It will take place in Grand-Bassam, Côte d'Ivoire, from 31 October to 3 November 2013.

The workshop will be based on a methodology for rapid ocean assessment. It will produce a regional assessment of the status of the marine environment for the region of the Guinea Current. It will also produce national level State of the Marine Environment reports for a pilot group consisting of five states – the Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The workshop will be held back-to-back with the regional World Ocean Assessment workshop (UN Regular Process, UNCLOS) which takes place from 28 to 30 October. The project will build capacity for marine assessments as a contribution to the World Ocean Assessment.

The participating states will be represented by minimum 3 experts: expert on marine biodiversity and habitats, expert on ecosystems and pressures, expert on socio-economic aspects. In addition, other regional experts will be present with knowledge of the marine environment of the Guinea Current, in order to develop the regional report.

State of the Marine Environment reporting is one of the focus areas of GRID-Arendal's Sustainable Seas capacity development programme.

GRID-Arendal and the Abidjan Convention have detailed the areas of cooperation in an MOU. Cooperation includes activities and projects on the delineation of the continental shelf according to Article 76 of UNCLOS, capacity building for technical, assessment and communication aspects of marine environmental and resource management, specific ecosystem-based approach to the management of vital marine ecosystems including Blue Carbon environments, support to the development, assessment, management and knowledge sharing related to sustainable tourism and integration of regional university-level educational institutions within the framework of the University of the Sea.